Sat Jul 04 1998 12:00:
I was mentioned on fire's automsg by ilyah for
bringing the 900 million seconds thing to light over on this
continent. omarr adds: date "+%s" will let you know when to
celebrate. And it certainly will. It happens at about 11 AM Nowhere
Daylight Time, if I remember my GMT->NDT conversion correctly.

MST3K today. X-day tomorrow.

Oi! Yesterday on TCM they showed The Lost
World, which I remember seeing at the Los Angeles County Museum of
Natural History (aka "the place in the Sheryl Crow video") when I was
about five. I couldn't get enough of the tyrannosaur fight where one
of the tyrannosaurs pushes the other one off the cliff. It's still a
great movie, modulo the shameful 1920s parts. For the confused, I am
referring not to the 1997 sequel to Jurassic Park, but to a 1925
silent film with dialogue on note cards and annoying organ music
playing throughout, which is based on a novel by Arthur Conan Doyle
and in which we see "mighty prehistoric monsters clashing with modern
lovers". Willis O'Brien, father of the stop-motion photography
technique and mentor to Ray Harryhausen, did the effects. After that
they showed King Kong, which I hadn't seen before, but which I fell
asleep in the middle of.

On a somewhat related note, according to
my physics lab TA, part of the movie Scream II was filmed in Kinsey
51, a large lecture hall in which I took Physics 8C, among other
classes. I find this hilarious. I may have to actually watch that
movie, or at least that part of the movie.

Note: I am not someone who finds the
inclusion of any place I know in a movie to be funny. Life is too
short for that. Kinsey 51 is a special case, just because of the
bizarre memories I have of that room. The other example I can think of
is the filming of a Mentos commercial on the Third Street Promenade in
Santa Monica.

From the "Songwriters Not Thinking Out The
Consequences Of Their Lyrics" category: "Every heart beats true 'neath
the red, white, and blue/Where there's never a boast nor a
brag". --You're a Grand Old Flag

Later:Excellent, Smithers. In honor of the Fourth, I present
the first article to go up on the new Crummy, a rhetorical analysis of
the Star-Spangled Banner entitled You Let A LAWYER Write
the National Anthem?. By Frances Whitney, who happens to be my
mother. Now you know where I get it.

Curses, no MST3K today. It was preempted by
some dumb Twilight Zone marathon. The Sci-Fi channel presents, Inside
the Twilight Zone.

Later still: Interestingly enough, Zappa will soon be played
on KUSC. I'm going to record it. I don't know what piece it is. The
Twilight Zone marathon is still going on. The Zappa pieces are not
being played by Zappa or any organization under his direction, they're
being played by some arts ensemble. The tape is rolling.